


Some People Just Need A Push

by gingerteaandsympathy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, self-indulgent nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:14:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22670830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerteaandsympathy/pseuds/gingerteaandsympathy
Summary: The first time is a prank.The second time is a kindness repaid.The third time is for real, and it frightens her.And the fourth time...Four times she kisses him, and one time he kisses her.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Fred Weasley
Comments: 37
Kudos: 474





	Some People Just Need A Push

**Author's Note:**

> *sigh*
> 
> i have no excuses. i'm working on a few longer projects, and i needed some fremione fluff to cheer myself up. hope you enjoy my shameless trash. it's mostly unedited, so all mistakes are purely mine.

**i.**

The first time is a prank. That is, it _has_ to be a prank; nearly everything he does is with the intention of stirring up trouble, and this is obviously no different. She’s fourteen, after all, and she is nobody's fool. 

He couldn't possibly _mean_ it.

"This game is _ridiculous_ ," Hermione announces. She speaks to the common room at large, but more so to the smirking deviant sitting just across the circle. He doesn't seem bothered by her outburst; he just _sits,_ still and smug as a blush rises in her cheeks and her heart stutters in her chest. He’s entirely too calm, and it isn’t fair.

"This isn't a proper dare," Ron says, his voice barely audible over the rushing blood in her ears. And then, when nobody answers, he cries, "I shouldn't be subjected to this! My own _brother_!"

But his distress is met with dismissal, or with silence. From Lavender, a sharp, "Hush, Ron!" and from Parvati, "Don't spoil the fun!" Harry is mute with horror, most likely. Hermione can’t bring herself to look at him—or at anyone, really. Her vision seems to have gone funny, tunneling and leaving everything blurred. She can only _feel_ the keen eyes of the circle as she hesitates.

The last thing she hears before everything is lost to her pounding heart is Ron's angry muttering. "What are Muggles _about_ with this stupid game?"

And across from her, _he_ waits patiently, eyes wide with a deceptive earnestness. It’s as if he’s saying, _C'mon, Granger. Where's your Gryffindor courage?_

The silent goading, that _look_ , is all it takes, really.

It pushes her up onto her knees, sends her shuffling awkwardly across the empty space of the circle. It feels so wide, like she'll never get to the other side, like she'll be stuck in an awkward limbo with everyone's eyes on her forever. But at last, she reaches him, and though she wobbles a bit, she refuses to stretch out her hands and steady herself against his shoulders. He’s sprawled out all akimbo, anyway, leaning back on his hands with one leg stretched and his other leg folded. One good push would send him backwards. So, she is forced to perch precariously before him and prepare for what she must do. 

It’s _mortifying._

Hermione glares down at the person who has dared her to kiss him.

"You're a prat, Fred Weasley," she says.

He simply smiles and taps his cheek, turning it toward her like an obedient child at bedtime. Though she’s quite certain that this is as close as he’s ever gotten to performing _that_ ritual, the troublesome tosser.

An unidentifiable feeling swells in her stomach. Perhaps relief. It won't be _so_ bad, then. He isn't demanding it—her First Kiss. Just something. Just almost.

She notices that his upraised cheekbone is a haze of freckles and pink-skinned windburn, presumably from Quidditch practice.

Hermione leans down, takes a deep breath, kisses Fred's cheek.

It’s over before she knows it. Just like that. His skin is cooler than hers, and it smells like damp grass, and there isn't time to gather much else. But the glint in his eye when he turns back to her makes her want to say something—makes her want to _show him_ —so she does.

"And to think, you could've dared the top of her year to do your homework for a week." She tries to arch her eyebrow in that superior, sarcastic way Snape always does, and she meets with partial success. Being able to glower _down_ at him certainly helps. "Wasted opportunity, Weasley." 

Hermione scoots back delicately, ignoring how her denims abrade her knees, feeling something like triumph at his surprised expression. It dawns over his face, conflicted and intrigued. Even a year above her, he knows that she outpaces him in academics. It’s not even close. His wandwork might be good enough, but nobody— _nobody_ —writes a better 30-inch essay than Hermione Granger. She grins.

The sensation is so satisfying that she barely even minds the girls and their giggles. And her stomach is still fluttering with the victory as she crawls into bed.

**ii.**

The second time is a kindness repaid.

"Alright, Granger?"

Or mostly. Because she’s moping, and he is _interrupting_.

Harry and Ron— _stupid, selfish Ron_ —had left the ball some time ago, at _her_ behest, of course. And now she feels properly stupid for it, as she'll have to walk her way back to the tower _alone_ , and _barefoot_ , in _December_. Her tears have long since dried up, but her head still aches, and she longs more than anything to be instantaneously Apparated into her own bed where it’s warm and she won't have to speak to or look at anyone at all.

"Hi, Fred," she replies dully. It’s really all she can manage. Even looking up at him, outlined by the glow of fairy lights and floating candles, makes the space between her eyes throb.

He drops down onto the stairs beside her, long legs dangling far further than hers could reach. His shoes look extra black and shiny next to her chilly, pink toes. 

He nudges her shoulder with his. "You look knackered."

"Well, I've had about all the fun I can stand." She addresses their feet. 

Her sarcasm is met with a snort of laughter and another gentle nudge against her arm. His woolen dress robes feel scratchy against her bare skin. "You seemed like you were having a good enough time earlier, out there on the dance floor."

He’s right. She _had_ been having a good time, but the memory of it feels shameful—tainted somehow, by Ron's disapproval. She sighs.

"You've got the moves, Granger."

Now it’s Hermione's turn to nudge him, letting the spike of embarrassment fizzle and energize her. She'd enjoyed the frantic music, yes, and dancing with Viktor, and even the crush of bodies that reminded her so much of euphoric First Days, of a familiar crowd returning for a fresh term at Hogwarts. But she'd hardly be able to retain her bookish reputation if she admitted any of that. So, she diverts. "Coming from _you_. _Honestly._ I'm pretty sure you and George invented an entirely new form of dance tonight. Are you double-jointed?"

"Wouldn't _you_ like to know," he teases. 

She shifts on the stairs, bottom numb from the cold, and once again wishes to be back in her dorm. Or at least in the Gryffindor common room, if Fred _would_ insist on socializing. As if reading her mind, he asks, "Are you headed back?"

She shrugs. "I suppose."

With more energy than the late hour should permit, he jumps up and extends a hand to her. "I'll walk with you."

"Where's Angelina?" she asks, allowing him to pull her upright. The balls of her feet ache, and it’s entirely likely that she's twisted an ankle, but the stone really is freezing, and she’s debating trying to force her swollen feet back into her impractical shoes when she notices his silence. As he looks back toward the ballroom, Fred's eyes are twinkling in a way that would normally make her nervous. Apparently, she doesn’t actually have the capacity to be bothered by him tonight. All her fury must have been wasted on Ronald. 

But she must put on at least a _show_ of disapproval. Wearily, she sighs again. "What are you up to?"

"Me?" His hands fly up to his chest in a pantomime of indignation and dismay. "Nothing!" Hermione arches a brow—she's perfected the expression by now; goodness knows she has plenty of cause to look disapproving these days. "I may be the better-looking twin, but I suppose there's no accounting for taste,” is his shrugged explanation.

She follows his gaze back through the archway, out onto the dance floor, which is sparsely populated by slowly swaying couples. One of those couples is George and Angelina, their hands tangled and foreheads touching. 

Hermione feels an unexpected rush of envy at the sight. They look so… _content._

She turns back to Fred with something that hopefully resembles a smile and not an exhausted grimace. "Playing Cupid?" 

He looks down at her and winks. "Some people just need a push.” And then his grin stretches impossibly wide, sparkling with that sort of authentic pleasure that he can summon at a moment’s notice. She wonders how he can manage after such a long night, when she feels like a mere shadow of a person. “Shall we?" he invites, extending his elbow.

She slides her hand around his arm, which he promptly tucks to his side. The radiant warmth from his body warms her chilled fingers, and it’s almost enough to take her mind off of her freezing feet and low spirits as they began their first slow steps up the staircase.

-

"You looked nice, by the way," he says. The party noise has died down as they drift further down the corridor. He’s shortened his stride to match her stumbling, numb-toed footsteps. And his voice is oddly devoid of humor. Despite herself, she glances up for reassurance— _yes, it’s still him._

"Before all the crying," he adds. _There it is._

She huffs a laugh. "Shut up.” But he tugs at her hand, forcing her to tilt his way. Her whole body careens into him, too exhausted to depend on her usual center of gravity. “Fred!”

"I'm serious. You looked good, Granger."

" _'Nice'_ ," she parrots, trying to sound lighthearted instead of bitter and shrewish. " _'Good'_. Ringing endorsements. Honestly, being thick must run in the family."

He snorts again. "Tetchy. What sort of compliment would you like, then?"

"I've no use for compliments right now," she snipes. "What I _want_ is a Cushioning Charm, or someone with their bloody Apparition license so I don't have to _walk_ anymore."

He stops right there in the middle of the hallway and she _would_ stomp her feet in protest, only they ache too much. "Well," he says grandly, "that's solved easily enough." And then, in a series of quick and eerily confident moves, Fred pulls out his wand, asks to borrow one of her shoes, and transfigures the infernal thing into a stepping-stool. He looks a bit smug when her eyes go wide.

And then, like a tall, gangly, _ridiculous_ carthorse, he steps in front of the stool and waits for her to, presumably, _mount him._

Mouth wide, she simply blinks and then stares. “What?”

He looks over his shoulder, nodding encouragingly. "Piggy-back. Up you get."

"Fred, don't be silly."

"Seriously, I used to carry Ginny all over like this and you're not much bigger—"

"Alright!" She smacks his back with her other shoe. "I am _not_ a child."

"And _that's_ animal abuse!" he decries, though his shaking shoulders and amused tone tell another story. "Get up, Granger, before I change my mind and make you walk on those pathetically swollen feet."

She heaves a great sigh. And because she’s _clearly_ mad, she hikes her dress up around her thighs. "Alright," she mumbles. "But if you say _one word_ about how heavy I am…"

"This train's leaving the station," he sing-songs, shifting back and forth in front of the stool.

"Are you a carthorse or a train?" She bounces on the stiff balls of her feet and then slides one hand up over his shoulder, to steady her while she jumps. Her fingers dig uneasily into the fabric of his robes. "I can't keep track."

"Track. Funny.” He chuckles drily. “I’m whichever gets us to the tower faster. Sometime before dawn would be preferable."

"Alright, alright."

Hermione takes a deep breath.

And then, like she’s vaulting, like she’s making a leap of faith, she—

With an “oof,” she all but _scrambles_ up Fred's back, desperately clamping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. It’s not graceful, really, but she’s grateful the moment her feet leave the floor. He’s so thin she feels the bones of his hips through his robes and cross her ankles together entirely, but she tries not to think about how this beanpole of a person is supposed to somehow haul her through the better part of Hogwarts castle, up multiple flights of trick stairways. “Sorry,” she mutters as she fidgets and shifts, limbs tightening and releasing as she fights gravity. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“There,” is all he says. “That wasn’t so hard.” 

Turning, he briefly considers the stool, as if he wants to transfigure it back to its original form. "Leave it," she hisses spitefully. "Now it serves an actual purpose."

She can feel his ribs expanding and contracting under her legs, evidence of a silent laugh as they resume their journey. To Hermione’s immense relief, he doesn’t sound winded when he eventually says, "I've never understood witches' shoes, myself. Why pretend to be tall?"

"They're devices of torture and indignity, I’m sure." When she speaks, her breath ruffles his hair. She’d fix it if her hands weren’t locked together, pressing into his chest for stability. "Though I’m sure witches other than myself wear them perfectly well.”

Now that she’s not walking herself, she notices, it’s not so miserably cold. Or perhaps it’s just how warm Fred is. _Probably from all the dancing,_ she rationalizes. Either way, she leans into him—just a little—letting her chest rest against his back. And she closes her eyes.

-

Years later, she won't be able to say what they speak about. If they speak of anything at all. 

She’s just so _tired_ , and the rocking motion of his footsteps gradually lulls her into a comfortable dullness that’s only broken when they have to climb stairs and his hands grip the undersides of her legs, holding her steady. The calluses, she remembers. The apologies.

"Sorry," he says each time, as if he isn’t doing her a favor. As if he’s doing something indecent by touching her thigh.

"Fred," Hermione insists sleepily, "it's _alright_."

She doesn’t know what moves her to do it. Just that, as they arrive at the top of the last staircase, she lets her chin loll against his shoulder. "I'm serious," she whispers, disturbing the hair over his ears. She feels him shift against her cheek. "Thanks, Fred." And she turns her head too, just slightly, enough to brush her lips against his face. They’re so close that she nearly touches the corner of his mouth. Not quite. Just almost.

It isn't much of a payment, really. But it feels… right.

When he eases her to the ground, he is quiet. He seems to hover back, letting her speak the password and step inside first, shifting back and forth as the blood returns to her feet. He waits for her to get her bearings, her tired gaze sweeping over the abandoned common room. And then, right as she’s about to make for the stairs, he says, "You look... beautiful, actually." 

His face is so serious that it _almost_ prompts her to an absurd, euphoric sort of laughter. It’s only the fear of waking the rest of her house that keeps her silent, her pleasure pressed behind her lips.

Instead, she smiles—her first true smile in hours. She can feel it climb up, all the way from her toes, which are now warm and buried in the plush carpet. She can feel the happiness in her flushed cheeks, aching with the pull of her expression.

"Thank you."

He cracks his own smile, and it’s a relief. "Goodnight, Granger."

"Goodnight, Fred."

**iii.**

The third time is for real, and it frightens her.

**iv.**

And the fourth time…

She is screaming his name. It is, to her own ears, incomprehensible. But she knows she must be saying his name, because her mind is emptied of anything else. 

Harry has her by the waist, holding her still as the rest of her body—her hands and arms and even her legs and especially her magic—reaches out. Her screams die to something less ringing, to coherent words that she can finally manage to speak. “Let me go, I need to—” she insists, her voice coming out hoarse and cracked. “Let me—”

“Hermione,” Ron says, softly and like she’s very fragile. He is next to her, somehow, and she wonders why he is here with her and not going to Fred, not running to see if he’s alright, if he’s—

“No,” she snaps at no one, at nothing. Her eyes rove hungrily over the figure on the floor, looking for the slightest movement that might show a sign of life. She barely registers Percy, kneeling beside Fred’s body, already shuddering with great, heaving sobs. _Fred’s body._ “No,” she cries. “Let me go, let me help. Let me—Harry, I know CPR,” she croaks desperately, twisting her head to look at her best friend. His face is smudged with dirt and grief. She pleads, “I can help. Let me help.”

Perhaps he is taken aback by the strength of feeling, by the desperation that thrums through her magic as a deep, driving current. She feels the band around her waist loosen, and it’s all she needs to push off and run. “What’s CPR?” Ron is saying, but she doesn’t explain, she just moves, shouting, “Go on without me! Ron, don’t leave Harry.” She doesn’t know if he listens, if _either_ of them listen. She hopes they will.

The exertion of running like this makes her dizzy; it’s been so long since she’s eaten, and she’s lost some blood, but it barely matters as she collapses onto her knees, hands groping around Fred’s forearm and wrist, feeling for a pulse. There is nothing. And he’s cold. Not icy, really, just decidedly not-warm. _Has it already been too long?_

It’s possible that she might fracture if she lets herself think about it, so she does the only thing that makes sense. Hermione whips off her jacket and slides it under Fred’s neck, angling him properly—or she hopes she’s doing it properly, but it’s been years since her lifeguard training. Her own heart beating wildly, she prepares to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

“Percy,” she manages, voice creaking with strain. She clears her throat. “I need you to count to sixty. Tell me when you hit thirty, then again at sixty. Yes?”

Percy is silent, and she looks over at him. His eyes are glued to Fred—to his unnaturally still chest, his closed eyes. “Percy,” she grates. “Are you with me?” 

She flings out a hand—to smack him or to hold him, she isn’t sure. But her fingers land on Percy’s arm and she squeezes, and it seems to work. His eyes, glazed with horror, slide up to meet hers. “Thirty seconds. Sixty seconds. Got it?”

His nod is all the confirmation she has time for before she bends over Fred’s body and _breathes._

_One, two, three…_

It feels like hours. It feels just like when they were younger, when she felt caught in the circle in the common room. Tunnel-vision. His lips are cold where hers are feverish, and it feels like a sick and strange pantomime of a First Kiss.

-

He’d come careening out of the house on unsteady feet.

Late and dark as it was, the July air was still heavy and overheated, and the house had been too crowded for her. Everyone was fussing over George, and mourning Mad-Eye, and it was just _too much._ For him, too, it seemed.

He walked like one in a dream, staring out into the night before dazedly falling back against the uneven wall.

_Forty-four, forty-five, forty-six…_

“Fred?” He looked positively ill, and he still wore one of Harry’s undersized jumpers, the sleeves pushed up around his elbows and stained from near-misses with dark magic. But for all his unease, he still tried for a smile. Crooked, of course—in the shape that had, at some indeterminate point, become the basis for many of her skipped-heartbeats and blushes—but not quite genuine. 

She moved closer to him, shoulder brushing the stucco. “How’s George doing?”

_Fifty-seven, fifty-eight…_

His jaw clenched. Unclenched.

_Fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one…_

And then his leg started jiggling like it did on the rare occasions she’d seen him studying in the library—or when he and George were hunched over a project in the common room, both knees going in tandem. It could mean so many things—impatience, excitement, boredom—but just now, it felt like a sign of restraint.

“Hey,” she said softly.

Her eyes caught on his Adam’s apple bobbing, a mottled red color starting to trail up from underneath the jumper, splotching his throat, which he cleared as if to speak. “He’s—” But he was unable to say anything else, and his mouth snapped closed again, jaw grinding.

She moved automatically: unaware of herself, motivated only by the need to comfort, peeling away from the house to stand directly in front of him. He somehow felt like he was leaning _off_ the wall, a marionette with cut strings—suspended and about to fall. Face hanging down. She stepped closer, bumping his jiggling knee with hers. “It’s alright. You don’t have to say.”

Looking up at his reddening face and seeing no answer coming, she reached out and gripped his fingers in hers. They were cold—whether from fear or from flying, she didn’t know. So her other hand followed, to take his one hand in both of hers and chafe some warmth into it. “He’ll be fine, you know,” she promised. “You won’t be alone.” 

Was it the friction or the words? Something she did must’ve worked, because it seemed she was pulling Fred out of himself—out of whatever horrible, gaping emotion he’d fallen into. His eyes cleared, focused, until he was looking down at her. Into her.

_Ninety-eight..._

With intent.

_Ninety-nine…_

A flush built on her cheeks. When she spoke, her voice felt overloud and awkward. “Your fingers are freezing.” And then she’d dropped her face, breaking whatever it was he was building. It was a cowardly thing to do, maybe, but she’d spent the entire night being brave. And she couldn’t let him keep _looking_ at her like that.

“ _Hermione._ ”

His hand had come to life in hers, wrapping and tightening around her fingers. His voice was raw and cracked. Afraid.

She felt a constriction in her throat. And then her eyes were dragged back up, almost against her will.

His face was so familiar to her, and she couldn’t pinpoint when that’d happened. 

Windburnt cheeks. A sense memory said they’d be cool to the touch, even on this scorching night. Familiar freckles. And honey-brown eyes, barely visible by the dim porch-light, red-rimmed from exhaustion and unshed tears. She didn’t know what to do with the way they _searched_ —darting back and forth between hers. Like she had answers. 

But she didn’t.

She just had her hands, which were somehow trailing up his arms and then—slowly, gently—winding around his neck, pulling him to her. “It’s alright,” she said again, words muffled by his jumper and the jut of his collarbone. His head dropped to her shoulder.

His hair smelled like smoke. And his hands slid wonderingly around her waist, hesitant. She shivered.

She hadn’t noticed the world shrinking, only she was certain it had. 

It had constricted only to the unexpected brush of his cheek against hers, and his unsteady breathing blooming warmth into the curve of her neck. His hands were big enough to span her back. It felt almost _jarringly_ lovely. Impossibly comfortable on a night like this one, when nothing should’ve felt this right. This impossibly perfect.

And then, he’d pulled his head back—just barely. Enough that their noses could nearly touch if he shifted _just_ to the right. Her eyes dropped to his lips, wondering if he would. If he’d move and close the gap they’d been slowly shrinking for what felt like most of her adolescent life.

“Hermi—” he started to say, with a question in it, but he didn’t get to finish.

Because Hermione was kissing him. She was—

She just needed him to understand that he _could_. That he probably always could have and that he could now. He could for always, if he wanted. It occurred to her all at once—a lightning strike—so certain, and just as frightening. 

Her hands had loosed, only to find their way into the shaggy hair at the nape of his neck, anchoring the both of them, pulling him down and into her. 

His lips were chapped, but warm. So warm.

“Oh my god,” she mumbled, and the corners of his lips lifted against hers.

_One hundred._

Nothing had existed outside of that moment.

-

Nothing exists outside of this moment. 

She just pushes down into his chest with her hands, and breathes into the boy she loves, over and over until, at last, Percy calls out, “Sixty!” and she says, “Again!” and somewhere between that and the wave of panic that’s begun to rise in her chest, tidal and terrifying, huge and swallowing, he—

“He’s breathing,” she gasps, immediately removing her hands from his chest and fumbling for his wrist. “He’s—oh my god, Fred. Can you hear me?”

Hermione cries when she finds his pulse. Tears spill hot over her cheeks, cutting salt trails in the dust coating her face. It’s thready and thin, but there’s a heartbeat.

And so, the fourth time is a series of times. 

It is the beginning of the rest of the kisses she hopes to dole out over the course of a very long life. It is first against his wrist, where her thumb is still pressing between her lips and his skin. Against the faint heartbeat she’d struggled to bring into being. Her open-mouthed kiss turns into a sob. Turns into a pressure in her belly like an unspent scream that bends her in half again, hovering over his face and feeling the faint trickle of air that leaves his mouth. She doesn’t dare kiss his lips—coated with grey dust, but pink with slow-returning blood—and interrupt the flow of oxygen.

So, she settles for everywhere else. 

Eyebrows and eyelids, cheeks and chin, and when the pressure in her belly starts to feel like relief, like joy, she kisses the tip of his nose and it twitches. It feels like laughter.

**v.**

“I imagine most married men would say they owe their lives to their wives. It’s not exactly an uncommon sentiment.” 

Fred’s voice doesn’t need to be magically amplified to be heard, even over the babbling crowd that’s gathered outside the Burrow. Still, there’s a smattering of laughter before a soft silence falls over the crowd, leaving only the crickets and summer breeze to fill in the edges of the coming speech.

She shakes her head indulgently—hoping he won’t say anything too mad, knowing he probably will, and she’ll love him for it.

“Though I suppose, in my case, it’s a bit more literal than usual.”

The laughing is more pronounced this time, rising over the tent like a cloud. A smile stretches her cheeks; she hasn’t stopped beaming all day.

“I don’t know _what_ I’d be without Hermione, really. Probably a ghost, haunting Hogwarts and making reconstruction completely impossible. Or lost, like so many others.” The unexpected note of sadness brings a more pervasive quiet, as well as the hot prickle of tears in the corners of her eyes. She blinks them away before he can become an auburn blur. “I am so lucky. Everyone here… _we_ are the lucky ones. No one more than me.” Though he’s not looking down at her from where he stands, Fred’s hand squeezes hers in reassurance. _It’s alright_ , the pressure seems to say. _We all have to remember._

-

It had been a fast courtship—if you could even call it that. It was years and years of missed-kisses and sparking connection played out in double-time, triple-time, one day blurring into the next until that first summer was drawing to a close and they were inseparable. Even her ceaseless study as she worked toward completing her N.E.W.T.s remotely couldn’t keep them apart.

And then Harry had proposed to Ginny.

“I wouldn’t want to get married at nineteen,” Hermione said, wrinkling her nose as she revised yet another essay. “Being a teenage bride doesn’t suit me.”

“What about twenty?”

She hadn’t even lifted her head, snorting inelegantly. “That’s two months away.”

Hands materialized, snaking around her waist. It was a familiar gesture by now, soft and undemanding, but she unconsciously leaned into him like a cat seeking a ray of sun.

His lips were at her ear as he whispered, “Exactly.”

There was no answer other than “yes,” really. Absolutely nothing else entered her mind—not a shred of doubt. _Some people just need a push, indeed,_ she thought. The quill dropped thoughtlessly from her hands as they moved to tangle with his. 

-

Her fingers soothe over familiar calluses. 

After a moment of reverent stillness, Fred continues. “Though I like to think, even if my body’d been left behind in the battle, I’d still be here, with her. Not anything so nice and official as married.” Here, his gaze twitches down to her, and he winks. “But I… I rather believe that, no matter what form I take—no matter what happens—I’ll always, somehow, be where she is.” And it’s her turn to squeeze, to pass silent words in the press of her fingers. _I love you._

 _I_ love _you._

“And Merlin knows I’ve tried. I spent an _embarrassing_ amount of time following her around at school.” The light joke buoys the atmospheric bubble surrounding them; Hermione feels lifted by their gentle laughter. “She may not have known it, but Hermione was, during her time at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, undoubtedly the most well-guarded student to walk the castle. My twin can attest to this, I’m sure.”

“More lovesick puppy than guard dog!” George pipes up from his seat on the grass, where Angelina is nestled between his legs.

“Oi! None of that! I am _very_ scary. For example, the first time I got Hermione to kiss me, she looked terrified. It was a dare, of course. Some people just need a push.”

A snort leaves her before she can stop it, and her hand flies to her mouth in mortification. But it’s too late, the crowd is giggling, and Fred is pinning her with one of those knowing looks. “Go on, you can admit it. You were scared.”

“Of you?” she teases. “Not likely. I was afraid Ron would get sick on my shoes.”

“A valid concern,” Fred replies, nodding sagely. His eyes search the crowd for his younger brother, saying, “Ron, it has to be said: you really ruined the mood. You and the other third-years.” Fake retching noises rise from somewhere within the tent, and by now, the laughter all around has blossomed into something raucous and real, too far beyond polite tittering to be reigned back in.

“However, I’m not going to let my brothers derail this speech like they derailed that kiss. Because I have _plans_ —” and the way he says that, says _plans_ , turns her cheeks beet red.

She hurriedly pipes up, “Fred.” It’s a warning and a suppressed bit of laughter all at once.

“Fine, fine. I’ll wrap it up.”

Her blush only heats further when there comes a wolf-whistle from somewhere in the back, probably Dean or Seamus. There’s a short list of people who know euphemisms for condoms at a wizarding wedding, so it doesn’t take her long to spot the culprit while the majority of the crowd is merely looking confused. “Oh my god,” she mutters, her face falling into her free hand. Harry grins at her.

“So," Fred pipes up, "before history can repeat itself, I’ll just say the things that need to be said and then kiss my wife.” 

The sound of Fred clearing his throat drags her gaze back up to him, and he looks… so powerfully sincere. It’s one of those looks she never gets used to, like he’s trying to grasp the whole of her—body and soul—in one glance. She has to fight not to chew her lip and steadily meet his eyes as he addresses her. “Hermione, I’ve loved you since I was fifteen and I’ll love you until I’m two hundred and fifteen, and you already know what that looks like, thanks to that little… mishap with the Ageing Potion.” His lips twitch up into a familiar little grin, one she’s had lots of practice kissing off his face. “Buckle up. It’s gonna be a wild two hundred years.”

And then, without any sort of closing, he drops back into his seat—like he can’t wait one more second; she knows he can’t and her heart feels _so light_ —and he bends toward her. He’s still a full head taller, and she has to reach to pull him close, but it’s him who ultimately closes the distance. 

His lips are warm. So warm.

He smells like smoke and grass and sunshine and—her heart threatens to beat out of her chest—he tastes like home.


End file.
